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Creativity Q+A with Hank Feeley

Well into his career as an advertising executive, Hank Feeley, 84, wondered if he’d taken the wrong fork in the road. Wonder led to action: He hung up his business suit and enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A painting hobby became a professional practice. Making, he said, is “what human beings are supposed to do.”

This interview was conducted in April 2025 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Hank Feeley


Describe the medium in which you work. What is your work?

I’m mainly a painter: 60% oil, 20% acrylic. The rest, watercolor and pastel. I also sculpt, but not much these days. I used to do a lot casting in bronze and lead crystal when I was in Chicago, but I’m not there anymore, not close to the foundries. What I’ve been doing [instead] is using Sculpy. You don’t need a foundry, but an oven to bake it.

When you decide you want to work in sculpture, what’s the thing the thing that says to you, “This needs to be a sculpture.”

I don’t think of it that way. I’m painting, painting, painting, and then I’m having down time, and I think I haven’t done a lot of sculpture recently, so I take it up. It’s almost on a whim. Painting is my main business. So I take it as a break, an interruption, a change. Something to stimulate a different part of the brain.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

When I was 2 or 3 years old, I had some cousins who would babysit me. They went on to become successful commercial artists. They got me interested in art. I wouldn’t call it “formal” training, but they began the process in my life. I became a pretty good painter in my teenage and college years. Then, I figured I’d make that a career, so I went into the advertising business with the idea of being an art director. Somebody was making three times what I was making down in the research department. I went down there, interviewed, and ended up working for 30 years on the business side [of advertising with the corporation Leo Burnett], not the creative [side], not being an artist but around a lot of artists. It always bothered me that maybe I’d taken the wrong fork in the road. I did art while I was in the advertising business, but it was a hobby. I got to a point where I decided — financially and otherwise — that I could take the fork I didn’t take originally. My office was across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago. I started taking classes (1993-1995). Eventually, I quit my business and went full-time. I got a BFA in studio art, and one in art history.

How did your formal training affect your development as a creative practitioner?

It changed everything. I always painted and drew, because I could. I didn’t ever think about art history, what other people did. When I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago [SAIC], I took a lot of art history, which really changed everything for me. It was a revelation — seeing what other people had done and understanding why they did it. For instance: I never liked Picasso. I didn’t understand him. After art history, understanding these artists, what they were trying to do, and the groundbreaking innovation and creativity — it changed everything for me. It changed my art. The other thing is the students I was going to school with were younger than my own kids: wide open, creative, experimental people. The SAIC really didn’t want to train a watercolor painter like me. They wanted to train the next Picasso. These creative kids influenced me a lot. So, I started experimenting a lot, tried to stretch the envelope.

You have two studios. One in Northern Michigan, and one in Florida.

The one in Florida is a second-floor, storefront operation, about 800 square feet. It’s a good space. I designed the one in Michigan — I’m a frustrated architect. It’s a cool place. I love being there. It’s built like a barn. It’s heavy-timber construction that old barns were made from. The doors open to the outside. Also, I use it as a storage space. Right now my boat and my cars are in there. It’s my home base.

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work?

A painting from the Red Dress series.

I started out doing themes; back in those days, it was music. I always play jazz when I’m painting, and I started painting with the music, and got musically-looking kind of work. I did that for while, and then I moved into something called The Red Dress: I did about 40 paintings [in which] a red dress was involved. Then I got into things based on the information age.

Years ago, when I was [still in the advertising business], we went to Venezuela. They had had a monsoon, and it had wiped out all these indigenous people who lived in the mountains. They had no electricity, no water, nothing. When we went there [with medicine and food], we observed one group of people who [had pirated] electricity from the government lines along the road. They were watching, on little rabbit-ears TV, Dallas. It was a paradox. It was like, What’s going on here?  People who have nothing and are starving and have no water, are watching a television show about the most affluent people in America. It stunned me. Years later, it occurred to me, in the age of technology, that people around the world see things that are totally incongruous, different to what their lives are. I made a bunch of paintings about it. I still do that if an issue comes up. I make the contrast between my life, and what’s happening in the rest of the world. It was a theme that gripped me, but you run out of steam. You do 60 of these paintings in a row, and you decide that you’ve done it. At that point I decided that I wouldn’t have themes anymore. I’d just get away from themes and just dream. That’s mostly what I do now. And, the way I achieve that: Over many years, I’m an inveterate collector of images. I have 14 boxes of images that I’ve pulled out of newspapers, or sketches I’ve made, or photographs. They catch my eye; I don’t know what I’m going to do with them, so I just throw them into the box. If I’m looking for an idea, I sit down and go through the box. These images were isolated when I first picked them out, but now they’ve gotten shuffled with other images, and I look at them in a different light. That becomes the spark, the new idea.

In so many of your paintings, there are symbols and images and icons and people scattered throughout the composition. It’s surreal. They don’t, at first glance, seem to be related to one another.

To The River [Ode To Edgar Allen Poe], oil on canvas, 56″ h x 44″ w, 2024, Hank Feeley
I put them together because they look interesting together and make an interesting composition. And, it’s pleasing to me. When people look at them, it causes people to think: What’s going on here? It stimulates their curiosity. People always ask me for an explanation. There is no explanation. I put together these things that I like.

What’s your favorite tool?

I’m a painter. It’s brushes, obviously.

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal?

I occasionally do some sketching. [Mostly,] I put things together in my mind. I have some beginning ideas. Sometimes I sketch things out. Like a figure. I want to sketch out the figure before I do it, to get it accurate. Believe me, I don’t know what the painting is going to be  once it starts. I keep manipulating it until I don’t know what else to do.

This would stand in direct opposition to the work done in an advertising agency where everything is plotted out, you think through the strategy, and nothing’s left to chance.

That’s true. My work [in the studio] is totally open ended. In the advertising business there’s always an end in sight. It’s an entirely different thought process. I live in two different worlds.

Do you feel comfortable living in two different worlds?

It’s interesting. I have two different names. My professional name as an artist and advertising person is Hank. But among friends from high school and college, I’m Chips. My business friends, they’re interested in productivity, and how long does it take me to make it? And, how many do I make in a year? I have no idea. It’s not the way an artist thinks. It’s funny — the way they [people in business] think and how an artist thinks, and I have both of these in my mind.

What role does social media play in your practice?

Old Painter Attacks New Canvas, oil on canvas, 44″ h x 56″ w, 2025, Hank Feeley

Zero. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do Instagram. I don’t have any relationship to it. I have a website that my daughter-in-law put together for me about 20 years ago, and it has never changed. It has [a tab] that says “About Hank Feeley,” and when you click on it, it says, “Information to come.” When people ask me for my website, I tell them to Google me. All the information about me comes through the galleries that represent me. They put it all out there. I’m too old to deal with that stuff.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

To make us better humans. It stimulates our better emotions. It causes us to wonder. It makes us more empathetic, more collaborative, more willing to listen. When you say that, you ask what the hell is the government doing defunding the arts?* It just doesn’t make sense. If you’re going to have peace in the world, you’ve got to have that collaboration and empathy — the things that art stimulates.

[*Beginning in the mid-1950s, the State Department realized the potential of jazz to build bridges with other nations, and started sending jazz musicians on state-sponsored tours of the USSR and the Middle East. PBS made a film about it.]

What part or parts of the world find their way into your work?

Courant Ascendant, oil on canvas, 48″ h x 36″ w, 2023, Hank Feeley

I like to think that all parts of the world do. I try to be very observant, very engaged with the world. I’m particularly good at catching visual things. I read a lot. I love poetry. That all enters my art.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

It’s indirect. I do go out and do landscape painting, but I’m mainly a studio artist. The stuff I do Florida and the stuff I do in Michigan is the same. But I will say this about where I live both in Florida and Michigan: It’s great to live in a community that appreciates art, where there are other artists to engage with. That keeps you fresh and stimulated — aside from the beauty of Northern Michigan and Leelanau County. It’s just a comfort to live here.

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice?

My two cousins who started me out were artist types, and went on to become professional artists. In the advertising business, you’re dealing everyday with artists. Many of the artists I dealt with in the business were, outside of that, serious fine artists. They did a lot of their own art and had gallery shows. When I went to the SAIC, the professors — some were my age, some were younger than me — I became very close to   many of them: Ted Halkin, Dan Guston, the Chicago Imagists, Barbara Rossi, Ed Paschke. My art was highly influenced by their thought process. All their art was different, but they had a good thought process: invent things, create, experiment.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Gallimaufry, oil on canvas, 44″ h x 56″ w, 2023, Hank Feeley

That’s a problem for me now. When I lived in Chicago — I haven’t had a residence in Chicago for about six years — I used to be in contact with some of the people I knew from the SAIC. They’d come to my studio, look at my work, and we’d talk. I don’t do that much anymore, and I miss it.

What role does exhibiting play in your practice?

Once a year I’m in a show in New York or Chicago. I want people to see what I’m doing. And, I especially want other artists to see what I’m doing. It goes back to what we were saying: Maybe somebody will become a better human because I’ve touched their emotions, I’ve made them think about art a lot more.

How do you fuel and nurture your creativity?

I look at what I do as a job. You show up in the morning, and you do your work. Some days you don’t feel like doing it, but you do because it’s your job. I’m in my studio every day — every day I’m not playing golf, which is on Wednesdays — and I start working. I don’t think in terms of waiting for inspiration; if you wait for inspiration, you’ll never get anything done. What you do is you work, and as you work, maybe something inspiring happens. But you have to put in the hours, put in the time, put in the dedication. I think of it that way.

Even though you’re putting out a lot of creative energy, it doesn’t sound as though you’re draining the well.

One of Hank’s inspiration boxes.

I don’t feel drained. A very good friend of mine who’s an artist said the way to live is to have a creative thought every day. It’s a regimen. Now, sometimes it’s hard to have a creative thought every day, but that’s your job and you’ve got to do it. So, I come in [to the studio] and I’ve got nothing going on, and I need to have some stimulus: I go to my boxes. That’s the great thing I have with these boxes. I can spend a day going through them, and all of a sudden: Boom! Let’s try this! Let’s try that. And bang! I’m off painting again.

What drives your impulse to make?

This goes back to being a human. Humans have always made. It’s in our nature. I’m doing what human beings are supposed to do. That’s what has made our world.


Learn more about Hank Feeley here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

Creativity Q+A with Dani Knoph Davis

“Place has become the bedrock of my work — ‘place’ meaning Michigan, where I was born and raised,” said Boyne City painter Dani Knoph Davis. “Learning about the wildlife of a place is so important, but has been swept under the rug over the last 50 years.” And so, with every brushstroke, Dani, 39, makes work that seeks to raise awareness about the wonder and awe of the other animals who live in her neck of the woods.

This interview was conducted in April 2025 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Dani Knoph Davis


Describe the medium in which you work. What is your work?

I work with watercolor, gouache, pencil, graphite, and heavy cotton watercolor paper to create illustrations of Michigan wildlife.

I’ve often wondered if people who work in illustration feel like they’re not accepted as a part of the Capital “A” Art world.

It is its own thing. I don’t know what happened historically. When you go back to the early 1900s wildlife art was a big deal. Even for my grandparents, wildlife art was a big part of the Art scene. It seemed to slip away.

John James Audubon circa 1826

Your work is reminiscent of the style people associate with Audubon. You place your creatures in their indigenous setting, and bring in other critters that might be companions or symbiotic parts of that setting.

Symbiosis is definitely a big part of my work. I find ecology fascinating, how species relate to one another. There’s a deep truth in that. I really crave deep truths nowadays.

What “deep truths” are you craving?

Whenever the world began, life evolved — together, in harmony, in a way things made sense. In society today, I find so much confusion. I think that’s another reason why I create this kind of art: It brings me peace. And, I think other people find peace in nature art as well.

Is the natural world a more straightforward place to you?

Absolutely. One hundred percent. I hate to use the word “escape,” but in today’s world, when I go into nature, I feel like I’m trying to escape society, to find peace.

What draws you to the media in which you work?

In art school they teach you acrylics and oils right off the bat. When I graduated from art school, I found myself living in tiny spaces.To work in oil paint you need windows, and room to breathe and clean up. Watercolor, for me, was more practical. I also fell in love with the process of creating transparent layers — something that’s a lot more challenging with oil paint or acrylic. And it’s a lot easier to clean up.

Where did you attend art school?

I went to the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design [graduated 2009 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts]. And I did an undergrad study abroad at the Glasgow School of Art [2008]. That was really meaningful.

What in particular did the Glasgow School of Art offer you as a student?

Cedar Waxwing Winterberry, watercolor, 17″ h x 11″ w, 2023, Dani Knoph Davis

I really enjoyed their program. It was more heavily focused on studio practice. Every student had their own studio space. Then you’d have an instructor you’d meet with once or twice a week, and they’d critique and help guide you. I felt like I started to grow as an artist then; whereas the University of Michigan was more focused on taking classes. There wasn’t enough studio time.

Describe your studio.

It has a view of a lot of trees out the window. It’s elevated on a hillside. I paint during the day, so that natural light is really important. It’s always a little bit messy, especially in the summer, during art fair season. It’s a room in my house, about 14 feet x 14 feet.

Your home studio is a continuation of what you said about working in small spaces. Are you accustomed to that now, or, in your heart of hearts do you long for a warehouse-sized studio?

I would love to double or triple the size of my studio. The next house I buy, it will be a priority to have a larger studio space.

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work? 

Place has become the bedrock of my work — “place” meaning Michigan, where I was born and raised. Learning about the wildlife of a place is so important, but has been swept under the rug over the last 50 years. We see small groups trying to raise awareness for species, and a lot of them do a great job. Our Department of Natural Resources and local tribes do a great job of stewarding species. But I come at that from an art angle. I want my art to help raise awareness for species in Michigan, but also remind people of the wonder and awe of wildlife. For example: When I’m at an art show, I get two or three good stories from people who walk into my booth, and they see a painting of a particular fish, and that reminds them of fishing with their grandfather; or of a turtle their sister caught when they were younger, and somebody got upset so they had to release it. For some reason, with adults, these things get buried. I want people to remember that these species are out there, and it’s their home, too.

Your work is about direct experience. How do you encounter these animals, and then reinvigorate them in your studio?

All this goes back to my childhood. My family has a generational log cabin on a lake in Gaylord. My favorite memories are being there with my family, paddling around the lake, seeing the loons, painted turtles, large-mouth bass, blue gill. These are experiences that have stuck with me my whole life. There’s always been something inside me that’s told me, These are important things. Don’t forget these things. Remember and share them. After I went to art school and I was trying to figure out what kind of artist I wanted to be, I kept going back to those experiences with wildlife in Northern Michigan. I also come from a family of hunters and fishermen. We have a lot of taxidermy in the cabin. And both of my grandparents were wildlife artists after they retired. To some degree, it feels like carrying on a legacy. I was so impacted by their work. Now, as I grow as an artist, I want to know more about Michigan species that I didn’t know about when I was growing up. It’s my own exploration I want to share with other people.

How do you begin to visualize the animals you want to paint? Are you sitting at the base of a tree waiting for a chipmunk to run over your toes?

No. But that sounds fun. In my earlier work, I’d work from my own photographs. Nowadays, I source inspiration from a program called iNaturalist. It’s a platform for people to take pictures of species and drop-pin their locations. A lot of biologists and naturalists use it in their studies. More recently, I find myself pulling multiple images and collaging them together in Photoshop to create my own compositions, which I paint from there.

What prompts the beginning of a project or composition?

It used to be I would do collections. My first collection was fish. Then I made collections of turtles and butterflies. Now I’m departing from that way of creating art. Trying to be a bit more spontaneous, and more poetic with my work.

Painted Turtle Water Lily, watercolor, 17″ h x 11″ w, 2025, Dani Knoph Davis

What does the poetic part of that mean?

Like this recent piece I did of a painted turtle with a water lily. It feels like a poem to me, without the words. Poetry is another place we can distill and crystalize ideas. Mary Oliver is great at that.

The subject matter you’re dealing with would make it easy to migrate into the totally scientific. In your work, you’re trying to infuse the subject with life. You’re not painting taxidermied work. You’re depicting the life inside the creature.

I try to capture that essence. One thing that has disturbed me about the scientific world of biology, natural history 100 years ago, paintings were always created from death. In biology, you are always looking at the dead specimen in the bottle. I want my paintings to convey the beauty of the life of the creature.

Dani’s favorite tools: paint brushes [and tubes of paint to go with them].
What’s your favorite tool?

The paintbrush. Brushes and tubes of paint.

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal? Any kind of tool to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I use Photoshop to create my compositions. But when I have a piece in my mind, I always work compulsively on the composition, and then I go straight into painting the final piece. One and done: I’m not a sketch artist.

Why is making-by-hand important to you?

I honestly feel like it’s genetic, in my DNA. I’ve always loved physical labor, and making things by hand. Given the option of whipping cream with the whisk or a hand mixer, I will use the whisk. I love doing things by hand. I get so much gratification. I feel like I learn more. And, I feel like I’m connected to what I’m doing. I think the way most people can relate to this is: There’s a difference when you type an email versus handwriting a letter to somebody. It’s hard to put words to it, but it’s there, and we all know it. This year I started handwriting letters to one of my best friends who lives in Chicago. It has been really joyful, sharing handwritten letters with somebody.

King Salmon, watercolor, from Dani’s Coldwater Collection.

When did you commit to working with serious intent?

After art school, I moved to Seattle, and felt like Alice in Wonderland throughout my 20s, trying to find a way forward. I felt I needed meaning [in her life], so I started going down to the locks and watching the salmon. I got fascinated by salmon, and learning about their life story. Just the fact that they’re born in a river, and the river imprints on them: After they’re gone out to sea, they know exactly where to return to where they were born. So, I created a collection of salmon paintings, and met with a gallery owner who asked to show them. Weirdly enough, I [in the process of] moving back to Michigan. I got a phone call as I was driving through the Upper Peninsula, and [the Seattle gallerist] told me the whole collection had just sold to a buyer from Oregon. That was the moment I started thinking, OK. I could do this seriously.

 What role does social media play in your practice?

I don’t do social media anymore. I stepped away from it in 2019. I found it was giving me more grief than I wanted. I don’t miss it. I haven’t looked back.

Did you step back from it personally and professionally?

Yes.

So, your online presence is through your website.

Yes. And occasionally I’ll send out an e-newsletter.

Many times, in these interviews, artists will tell me how much they value Instagram, for instance. They talk about being able to show the world their work, or being able to look at other people’s work. How do you weigh in on that?

When I hear the word “world,” I cringe a little bit nowadays. Going back to the importance of place, and being in the place you are, and recognizing its importance, I find that it’s more fulfilling for me to be present in the place I am as opposed to scrolling through the world. It’s totally overwhelming for me.

How do you let the world know what you make?

The most important thing I do to connect with others around my work is to do art fairs in the summer. We have a great art fair scene in Northern Michigan. I’ve met so many wonderful people at these shows, and made so many wonderful connections with real people: artists, buyers. People have shared their wildlife stories with me, and that has become cherished and important to me.

Cardinals, watercolor, 17″ h x 11″ w, 2025, Dani Knoph Davis

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

For me, personally: Refocusing our minds on wildlife in the place where we live. And reminding folks of the awe and wonder they’ve experienced in the natural world. At the end of the day, I selfishly want people to care more about wildlife. That’s my drive, even if it’s as simple as not cutting down the tree that blocks your view in the front yard.

It’s an overwhelming job. How do you keep despair at bay?

I pay attention to what our local conservancies are doing, and try to support their work. I try to help share the stories about all the good work our DNR and local tribes are doing — a lot of people like to criticize what those agencies aren’t doing right when in reality they’re doing a lot of innovative work to support populations and habitat for wildlife. I think we don’t give them nearly enough credit. If you go back in Michigan history and look at our state from the late 1800s to the 1920s, the habitat was devastated. Young folks don’t know that now, and a lot of people have forgotten it. Clearcut city: A lot of our woods built Chicago. Overfishing. Sturgeon were almost completely wiped out. If you look back to the 1930s when the DNR was set up, so much incredible work has been done. We can’t take that for granted.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

It’s part of the foundation. It’s the original inspiration for me. It’s an endless inspiration for me. We are so lucky to have so much conserved, preserved land up here.

Would you be doing different work if you did not live in Northern Michigan?

Probably not. I’d be doing wildlife art no matter where I lived.

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice?

Both my grandma and my grandpa, Bill and Joan Davis. When they retired, my grandma painted landscapes in a French Impressionist style. Her painting would make my brain feel like a symphony. My grandfather was woodcarver, and [his subject was] wildlife. We have a loon he carved in our cabin that looks like a real loon. The amount of detail is incredible. They were a huge influence.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

Laura Yeats. Her partner ran the gallery in Seattle. She was influential, and one of the first people in my early adulthood who encouraged me, and gave me the confidence to take my art seriously.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Bluegill, watercolor, 11′ h x 14′ w, 2020, Dani Knoph Davis

My partner, John. I ask him to do this a lot — to look at my work, and make suggestions. In art school, they teach you how to critique work, and it can be brutal, but you learn how to take it and how to word things in a way that is constructive without being offensive. I wish everybody was able to convey constructive criticism. It applies to so many things in life.

Are you able to take those skills and apply them to your own work? Self-criticize?

Yes. I’m very critical of my own work, which is why I spend so much time composing the piece before I put pencil to paper.

You spoke earlier of exhibiting your work at summer art fairs. Let’s get into this some more: What is the role of the exhibition in your practice?

I love sharing my art work at art fairs because you get to meet the viewer, and [hear the viewer’s] perspective, which is something you don’t always get in a traditional gallery setting. I value that so much — on a human level. I’ve gravitated to the art fair world because of that. I’ll do traditional gallery exhibits on occasion, maybe one a year. But it’s so funny to me to drop off a painting, and then see it hung on a gallery wall, and leave it. I love connecting with people over art.

More of that direct experience stuff.

Yes. There’s been this dialogue, culturally, about the lack of third spaces. As a society, we’ve lost these places in the world where anybody can go to, and interact with other people. In Europe, their markets are a great example; or, their civic squares. The library seems like the last-standing example of these places. And, of course, we have great farmers’ markets in Michigan; but there aren’t many places now where you’re just meeting folks, and conversing, and sharing stories. There’s a certain joy and fulfillment of communing with strangers. My mom will help me at art fairs, and she ends up in these conversations with strangers about anything and everything. Next thing you know they’re talking like they’re old buddies.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

Spring Peeper

It’s always about getting outdoors for me. In particular, the spring, summer and fall. The winter is so quiet up here, but I love finding wildlife tracks in the snow. They [the other animals] are out there even though you don’t see them. I cross-country ski a lot. We’re on the brink of everything coming back to life. I opened the door the other day and heard Spring Peepers. It’s still so cold out, but they’re peeping.

What drives your impulse to make?

It’s like meditation for me. It’s such an intense focus that I can’t think about all the other life stuff that stresses me out.

You have a day job. What is it?

I do marketing, graphic design and some advertising for some realtors.

How does the work of your day job cross-pollinate with your studio practice?

Having a day job forces me to have a really intense schedule. I schedule my studio time every morning. I wake up, and I spend the first three hours of my day in my studio. Then, I do my day job. I run on a strict schedule, and that works for me.


Read more about Dani Knoph Davis here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

 

Creativity Q+A with Douglas Racich

Leelanau County painter Douglas Racich, 64, divides his painting time between watercolor and egg tempera, an ancient, slow-moving medium made of ingredients that sound like the beginning of a cake recipe. The world outside Racich’s studio moves quickly. He does not. He depicts still, quiet subjects. Racich’s paintings are about Northern Michigan — to which he, his wife Michelle and three children moved in 1998 from Illinois. He hopes they’ll cause people to stop, look, and “slow down.”  

This interview was conducted in February 2025 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Douglas Racich


Describe the medium in which you work. What is your work?

It’s 50/50: watercolor and egg tempera.

What is egg tempera?

It’s egg yolk and water. That’s the basic recipe [into which] you’re adding pigment. The amount of pigment you add can make it appear more or less translucent. In general, it leaves an opaque surface when compared to oil and acrylic. Watercolor has a matte appearance.

Do you prepare your own egg tempera paints?

I do. I think most artists who are working in that medium do. It’s tricky. Some pigments mix easily. Others are hydrophobic, and don’t do what you want them to do.

Do you raise chickens?

I don’t. I do have a CSA membership [community supported agriculture] from Nine Bean Rows down the road. Eggs come with the CSA [box]. I don’t eat eggs. I just eat plant-based foods.

Egg tempera is an ancient medium. It’s a niche medium. The world is full of readymade paints. So: 1.) What was it that sparked your interest in painting in egg tempera?; and 2.) How did you learn?

Andrew Wyeth [2007]
Initially, as a kid, I’d do little sketches here and there — I never knew anyone who was a real artist. Right after the birth of our first child, my wife got me a set of watercolor paints, and I said, That’s really nice. I threw them in a drawer, and didn’t touch them for a number of years. I finally got them out and started painting in watercolor, which I did for two or three years. As I got the hang of it — I had no formal training in art, so this is all just trial and error — I started picking up books at the library, and started reading about artists, and this gets to the question of egg tempera. I saw a book about Andrew Wyeth, and that was it. I knew I needed to figure this [egg tempera painting] out.

If you could zero in on the thing that Wyeth’s paintings made you want to learn how to paint in egg tempera, what would that be?

Karl, 1956, collotype, 17″  x 24″ w, Andrew Wyeth

We lived in Illinois, outside of Chicago, before we moved here [to Leelanau County] — it was a non-suburban setting that made me think of where Wyeth lived [in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania]. I think I was drawn not only to his subject matter, but to the light. When he set up paintings, they weren’t like the standard landscape, the standard portrait. They were just a little bit different. There’s a great one he did of his neighbor Karl. I love that piece.

How did you learn to prepare your paints?

Well, pre-internet: the library. I looked up other artists beside Wyeth. Robert Vickrey was a big egg tempera painter, and some of his books had nice details about how he put those mixtures together, and the processes he used. In the egg tempera field, there are different ways people mix their paints. I take the egg yolk and water mixture, put it in a little container, put in the color, and mix it up. You can vary the ratio of water to egg, but generally it’s 50/50. Mostly, it has been trial and error figuring out the basic formula. I just kept working on [the formula] until I felt comfortable. In this age, people like fast. With acrylic paint, you can just whip out a painting. You can’t do that with tempera. You’ve got to be patient.

There’s a stillness to your paintings. They’re quiet.

Pears On The Tool Box, 2025, egg tempera, 18” h x 30” w, Douglas Racich

I don’t have a good feeling for figure work and people. I’m not confident in my drawing ability, which has led me to a lot of my landscapes, to the outbuildings, and the still lives I do. They may seem quiet because they’re about non-moving things.

What other subjects are in your line of vision?

Valencia, 2021, egg tempera, 14” h x18” w, Douglas Racich

I love gardening. I love growing squash, so I’ve done multiple squash paintings. And, I like flowers, too. I’m surrounded by cherry orchards on one side of our property, and apple orchards on the other; I’ve done a lot of pieces about those. There’s no shortage of subject matter. I grew up on a farm. It was my uncle’s farm [southwest of Chicago], and my parents had a little house next door to it. It’s how I grew up. It’s what I love.

How has the lack of formal, visual art training affected or advanced or put hurdles in the way of your practice?

I don’t know that it has had any impact whatsoever. I have on occasion heard remarks from people who’ve gone to art school about “real artists” versus “not-real artists,” and I’m not sure what that is. I feel like I’ve put in the 10,000 hours.

[NOTE:  The “10,000-hour rule,” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers,” suggests that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery in a particular field.]

I don’t know why that gets on my nerves. My self-training hasn’t affected anything. There hasn’t ever been a problem getting into galleries, exhibiting.

How have you taught yourself?

Looking up stuff. If the internet had been around when I first started painting, it would have been fantastic. I looked at a lot of print material. Some of the big art magazines back then had wonderful articles showing how people made their work, their technique. Besides looking things up, I kept on trying to do it. Tempera can be frustrating. You have to be careful, and patient. You can work for weeks on a piece and not like it. I had a piece, a still life with cherries. It was almost too simple, and I didn’t like it. I ended up cleaning out another area [on the board] above the cherries, and painted another cherry above them. I laid in all the shadows so it appeared that the cherry was hanging in mid-air. I called it The Rapture. But that’s the nice thing with tempera. You can go back. I’ve completely sanded down a board, and started all over again. You do get a second chance, but it’s tough after you’ve spent all those hours.

Describe your studio/workspace.

Doug’s studio, indicated by the levitating arrow.
Doug’s studio: interior view.

I have three children, and we live in a very small farmhouse. Early on, we had a couple of upstairs bedrooms that weren’t being used. That was my studio. Once I got the [studio] finished out here, the sense of space was overwhelming. I don’t think it’s that big, but compared to being in a little bedroom all the time … Paintings stacked on top of paintings: It felt very claustrophobic. I’ve never done big paintings, bigger than the standard watercolor sheet [2’ x 3’].

[NOTE: Doug’s studio is approximately 350 square feet. It is the front portion of an old barn on his property. The barn was constructed in the 1870s.]

What prompts the beginning of a project or composition?

The end of the painting I’m working on. There’s that. There’s the need to push stuff out for galleries. In general, when I think I’m getting to the end of a piece, I’ll think about what I want to do next. If I’ve been working on a watercolor that has taken forever to finish, I think, I’ve got to switch to tempera. As far as subject matter? I do a lot of photography. If I’m out on a hike or on a road trip, I’ll take pictures of things that interest me, or will be reference material. In my head, I can keep thinking about a piece I’d like to paint, and it could be years. At some point it’s: OK, it’s time to make this. Then there are other times, bringing vegetables out of the garden, I’ll think, This is a great squash, and, boom: I’ll want to paint that right away. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It organically happens.

How many galleries represent your work?

It has taken a hit. When I was living south of Chicago, I had two or three in the city. Then, up here, I was showing in as many as four. Right now, I’m down to one gallery in Elk Rapids [Mullaly’s 128 Gallery].

Generally speaking: Are the subjects you paint dictated by your desires and interests? Or, knowing the market for a certain gallery, do you adjust what you make so it’s a better fit?

Still Together, 2024, watercolor, 19″ h x 37″ w, Douglas Racich

When I was showing at [the now closed] Main Street gallery I did find myself leaning toward more local images: the Sleeping Bear Dunes, historic buildings. I still love those things, but the still lifes are pretty universal, and it wouldn’t matter where they were made. I tend to now try to find subjects that would work anywhere. Many of the buildings from the Sleeping Bear Dunes area, people outside of this region wouldn’t know where the buildings were. They’d just think it was a fun picture of a barn or old stone building. I have a piece in the Dennos [Northwest Michigan Regional Juried Exhibition] right now. It’s simple: Just a big field of grass with a couple of oak trees in the background. It’s a scene from Ashland, Oregon. I’ve had a couple of people ask me where this was in the Dunes? It has that open feeling to it you [can experience during a hike in the Dunes].

What’s your favorite tool?

Doug’s favorite tools: his mixing trays.

My mixing trays [plastic and ceramic]. Especially with watercolor and tempera, I’m constantly mixing the different colors, and I can use the same trays for both media. I love seeing the paints laid out, I love seeing the different colors, and knowing what I’ve got to do: They’re there, but I’ve got to get to work

Do you use a sketchbook? Work journal? What tool do you use to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

I don’t. If I do anything, it’s about color combinations I’ve used on certain pieces. Sometimes I’ll find myself doing three or four small still lives at the same times. I might make notes on what colors I was using to make a particular mix if I have to recreate the color I was using. Mostly, it’s technical stuff.

When did you commit to working with serious intent? What were the circumstances?

I had a friend, Joan, who was an elementary art teacher, and also worked as an art agent helping to place artists’ works in galleries. [In the mid-1990s] she saw my work, and was instrumental in me starting to show a lot in the Chicago area. She vacationed up here, and got me in a gallery in Charlevoix. She said, You’ve got to go up there. I said, It’s like Alaska. Why would I want to go to Northern Michigan? She told me I had no idea. We eventually visited. She was responsible for me thinking about painting as real work. Until then, my painting took place on weekends and after work.

You had a day job.

I was a dentist. It wasn’t a calling. A number of things came together that made me realize I didn’t want to keep on doing that. At that point, I was also starting to sell more art. We’d finally made our way up here, after all the poking and prodding from Joan, so we wanted to move up here. And, that’s what we did. I painted full-time for four or five years after we moved up here. At this point, my kids are getting into high school and college age, so I took a job [outside the home] for a biological testing firm, and they had a laboratory in Traverse City. That took care of the bills, but I finally let go of that. The painting never stopped. Even during that time, I still had four galleries I was showing it. It was hard. Now I’m back to just-art. Nowadays, with social media, [the art business] is a different thing. I used to just rely on the galleries to do most of the work. Now, I try to get a handle on social media.

What role does social media play in your practice?

I’m a big Instagram-er. I don’t look at Facebook anymore. I love Instagram. I love seeing what other artists do. I think social media is essential now. What can it hurt to just throw stuff out there.

What’s the visual artist’s role in the world?

To get people to slow down a minute or two in their lives. Just to sit there and focus on something for a minute: stop and look. People are so busy. I don’t think people spend a lot of time just being quiet. It’s hard, the way society is — with the internet, with phones, with work. People are just constantly moving. I hope that people can have a little, quiet moment when they are looking at art. A little sense of calm and quiet.

We live in a world where people are bombarded by images. There’s no dearth of visuals to look at. But looking at something that’s hanging on the gallery wall is different than looking at something on a screen. I think it’s hard to get people to move away from the abstraction of their phones, and their screens, and all the millions of images they see every day, to directly experience something in a gallery wall, and consider it quietly.

Bowl Of Blues, 2018, watercolor/drybrush, 14″ h x 14″ w, Douglas Racich

I’ve hung my work in art walks, for instance. People will go through the different shops displaying art, and 85 percent of the people just want to get their books stamped so they could put it in the prize raffle at the end of the walk. They just flew by. I do think museums and galleries, since there’s nothing else in there but the art, helps people to slow down a little bit. That’s the drawback of social media, trying to capture an image on a little screen. Does the viewer even understand the detail? It’s hard to capture.

Who has had the greatest, and most lasting influence on your practice?

My wife, because of all the support that has allowed me to do this. From an artistic standpoint, it was, initially, Andrew Wyeth. That was the thing that made me want to paint, in the style I wanted to paint. I also love the comments of other artists, friends who are visiting, just chatting about what they’re doing, what I’m doing.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Again, my wife, Michelle. She’ll be very honest with me. It’s nice having grown-up children now: one who paints all the time, the other had a gallery.

What role does exhibiting play in your practice?

If you want to make money, the work has got to be out there. I like getting feedback from the gallery owners, whether it’s good or bad. I like trying to participate in local shows — it gets the public together to support the arts.

How do you feed and nurture your creativity?

Lightning Rod, 2023, egg tempera, 18″ h x14″ w, Douglas Racich

Number 1: Getting outside, since I tend to paint what’s around me. Hiking, biking, kayaking, a little ride in the car — that nurtures it. I’m not specifically looking for things. I just happen upon them. I do love galleries. Looking at other peoples’ work is empowering.

What drives your impulse to make?

I think about that sometimes from a biological, evolutionary standpoint. It’s just something that’s in me.

If you’re not painting, do you get the shakes?

The summertime gets busy. The garden. The yard. It’s warm out, and I do love being outside, but I do think I need to get back working in the studio. So, yeah. There’s a little something that’s ticking away inside me.


Read more about Douglas Racich here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

Creativity Q+A with Jil Johnson

Jil Johnson, 63, is an outsider artist: no formal training, works in a naive style, wants to make beautiful things by hand. She lives in Traverse City. She wants “to live to the fullest, and that means being authentic, and that means knowing who you are.” She does.

This interview was conducted in December 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Jil Johnson


Describe your work.

Technically, I’m an outsider artist, that is: somebody who has no [formal] training.

You work in 3D, sculptural forms.

Not always, but it seems to be what I’m currently doing. Sometimes I’ll make a painting. Sometimes it’s sewing. Sometimes it’s fiber. There’s not one answer, but for the most part it’s 3D work that involves some woodworking; there’s always paint involved.

Outsider art — and I looked to Wikipedia for this — is art “made by self-taught individuals who are untrained and untutored in the traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds.” What parts of this definition accurately reflect how you view yourself, and your practice?

All of it. Every bit of that.

Do you use found objects?

No. It’s important to me that I make everything by hand. So, it depends on the found objects. If I wanted to embellish something with raw diamonds, or a meteorite, that would be something I’d use that I did not make.

Why is it so important that you make every element that goes into your composition?

Glory, Jil Johnson

There’s this idea that I’m cheating if I don’t make every single thing on there. I’m sort of a purist. But there’s more to it. Everything I feel — energy, vibration — goes into that. There’s so much value in a handmade stitch. Or laboring over a tiny leg of a doll I carved myself. I feel there’s something I’m putting into the piece by doing that. It’s really important to me. There’s so much alchemy in that.

You’re your own art supply store.

I go to art supply stores. I need paint. I need brushes. There are a lot of things that I’ll find there that I will use: google eyes, because they’re funny to me. [Generally speaking] I don’t like something that’s fresh and new. I want my hand involved in every bit of [the creation].

What draws you to this work?

It’s some sort of pathology, no doubt. It’s something that I absolutely have to do, and a lot of it has to do with repeating objects, putting things in a row. I have this thing about lining things up and repeating a pattern over and over and over. I don’t want to put a negative slant on it, but there’s some sort of obsessive quality to it, but that’s part of the Outsider artist label, which makes me an Outsider artist as opposed to a folk artist.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

No.

What kind of work did you did before you threw yourself body and soul into your practice?

I have a hard time being and staying employed. It’s random stuff. There’s not one thing that I did. I would do the thing until I couldn’t stand it anymore and move onto other things.

How long have you been focused on your practice as your primary activity?

Twenty-five years ago, I stopped drinking and doing any kind of drugs, and then it all came out again. I’ve always been an artist, but I just pushed it away. It wasn’t anything I ever considered doing as a job until I sobered up. I thought I’d be a tattoo artist. The first thing I did was put together drawings of some tattoo [designs] I was going to take into a tattoo parlor, and then it became a painting, and then I brought it into a gallery [the now-defunct Watermelon Sugar Gallery in downtown Traverse City, Michigan], and it sold. I started doing more and more and more, and I haven’t stopped since.

Describe your studio/workspace. 

It’s my bedroom, with a big architect’s table in it. I also have an outside area — a woodworking area — that I don’t paint in. I do a lot of assembly work there.

Are you a hand tool or a power tool gal?

I like Dremels. If I’m carving, I’ll use hand tools, but for the finer, detail work, I’ll use a Dremel tool. It saves my body.

What themes/ideas are the focus of your work?

Everyone, Jil Johnson

That’s tough. Sometimes it’s a visual image I want to repeat, a pattern or a shape. A lot of times it’s a feeling I want to get out. Sometimes it’s a straight-up inspiration: I get a picture in my head I need to reproduce, and that’s easy, and fun, and I love it when that happens. That’s a field day. But when this is your job, you can’t wait for that. I want to keep my hands moving at something every single day. Lately, I think: What can I make for somebody that they will love, that will be very special? And then, with that, something just happens. My hands tell me what I want to do: Do I want to paint? Carve? Hammer nails? Push clay around?

What part or parts of the world find their way into your work?

I’m very inspired by the city, and I don’t live in the city anymore. I’m in my own little bubble here. I’m not influenced by what’s going on in the outside, but I was — very much — when I lived in the city. Chicago, for instance. Very inspired by the grittiness. Landscapes don’t inspire me. Nothing inspires me. It’s all coming from the inside.

You talked about the city’s “grittiness.” Is it a vibe?

It’s a vibe, for sure. It seems like there is a certain patina that’s found in an urban environment that’s not seen here on a regular basis. It feels like when I walk down the street I can look at the side of the of a building, and see a pattern, a patina, that’s been sitting there forever; the side of a wall with old stenciling on it, or an old window. I just don’t see the same thing here that much. There’s an edginess to a city that’s not here. This place is very pristine, very clean, and clear, and fresh. But I love it here.

What’s your favorite tool?

Sand paper. It adds so much life. It changes things profoundly, in a way that is very satisfying.

Sketchbook? Art journal? Do you use anything like that to make notes and record thoughts about your work?

Jil’s sanding gear.

Rarely. If I’ve got a commission, I have to write down ideas, for sure. That takes research and homework, which I write it down, and make lists. Sometimes, if I get an idea, I’ll write it down, but I don’t do a lot of that.

Your work is deeply hand-built with lots of moving parts and mechanical novelties. Talk a little bit about how you make your work?

Inner Voice, Jil Johnson

I guess it depends on what I’m making. There’s so many different types of things I make, but I’ll say this: Oftentimes, unfortunately and inconveniently, I’ll have something made, and then I’ll get a new, how-about-this? idea, and then I’ll have to back up. I have to almost create my work backwards. I don’t have it planned out in my head. I’ll make something, let’s say it’s a horse that I’ve already stuck onto a board, and I’ll say, Wouldn’t this be cool if it were mechanical and could move? So now, I have to figure out a way to engineer that without removing the horse from the board, or ruining it. It’s all backwards, and makes it very difficult. I’m often having to carve around things, or paint underneath things, and I can’t mess it up.

Do you know when to stop?

Yes. Definitely.

There’s nothing ambiguous about that? You know when you know.

Right. But so much of the work just creates itself. I start with something, and then it starts creating itself, and I go, I wish I’d known this sooner before I’d screwed it all together.

Why is making-by-hand important to you?

It’s very fun. It’s also challenging. I love the challenge of excruciating work that requires hand-eye coordination of a surgeon. The tinier, the more articulated, the more I have to struggle to make this thing work — that’s really, really satisfying to me. The process of hand work is very satisfying. It would not even be interesting to take something I’d found, and stick it on a board. I have to do something with it. And, once I think it’s done, I’ll find something else to take [the process] even further and further. How far can I go with this? How much unnecessary work can I put into this? How hard can I make this for myself?

I like that you give yourself permission to go back in and work on a piece after it’s “finished,” even after the piece is affixed to the substrate.

Oh absolutely. There’s no “breaking” it. I made it in the first place. I can always fix it, and any kind of fix or repair just adds to it.

That’s very freeing.

The Sheep Rescue, Jil Johnson

I look at these things [on which] I’ve spent a lot of time, and think, It’s just not special enough. It’s just not interesting enough. It could be better or more. So now I’ve got to wreck everything I’ve done by doing something outrageous to it, and it always works out for the better. It is very freeing. I’m always glad I did it. I’ve never been sorry when I’ve “wrecked” something that wasn’t really speaking to me.

I think about that as the gateway to more interesting ideas that are just waiting to be birthed.

One-hundred percent true. That’s how I figured out my process, how I figured out what I like, by making mistakes and wrecking things. I did a painting once. It was enormous, and I hated it. So I took it outside, sprayed it with a hose. I took a brick to it, and had a tantrum. I ripped it apart into tiny, little pieces, and then I used all the tiny, little pieces as mosaics to create a whole new image. It was amazing, and so much fun.

Why does working with our hands remain valuable and vital to modern life?

This is such an important question: It’s how you access the soul. It’s a way to authentically connect with people. It’s such an important avenue. It’s utterly meaningFUL as opposed to something being meaningLESS. It’s everything. It’s a way to keep things alive, and vital energy flowing in the world.

Anyone who looks at your work can’t help but understand that it’s intensively hand built. Does it take people by surprise? Are people estranged enough from handwork, in our modern times, that they find your work a mystery? Or an amazement? What’s the perception?

Chapel Garden, Jil Johnson

It’s assumed that [her work is made of] found objects. They’re not. I have to say that many times. I get that a lot from people. They seem to be amazed that I’ve made all these little things.

What role does social media play in your practice?

I use Facebook a lot. And, I’ll put pieces of art on it, which sometimes sell. I like Facebook. It’s a social outlet for me. I’m home. Alone. I don’t know that I use it for [inspiration for] my work. I feel like the art is coming from something inside of me. It would behoove me to promote my work more on social media a lot better than I do. I should have a website. I should have an Instagram. I should be promoting my work all over for financial gain. I have no interest in that. But the owner of the gallery [Shanny Brooke of Higher Art Gallery in Traverse City, which represents Jil] does, so I’m happy that she does that.

Talk about why you don’t have a website.

It’s not what I want to do. I’m not interested in being a businesswoman. I’m not good at it. It doesn’t speak to me. Marketing doesn’t interest me. That’s a whole other job. I sell my work through galleries, and they get half of my money, but they’re doing all that stuff for me. And Shanny has a beautiful website.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

Depends on the visual artist. There are millions of answers to that. Some people have a message to send. Some people are political. Some people want to change the world with their ideas. Some people want to share love. Some people want to entertain.

You seem very clear on that.

I am.

How do you think you get so clear? Is it all that quiet time alone?

Great White, Jil Johnson

I’ll tell you why: I want to have a great life. I want to live to the fullest, and that means being authentic, and that means knowing who you are. That’s my priority, every day, all the time.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative practice?

I don’t know that it has anything to do with living in Northern Michigan. I would be the same no matter where I was living.

How long have you lived here?

I don’t know. Thirty years?

Did you know anyone, when you were growing up, who had a serious creative practice? Somebody you’d consider to be a role model.

Both grandfathers. One grandfather did beautiful landscapes with oil paints. Self-taught. The other grandfather did some painting, but he sewed clothing for his children. He had another job. He was a pastor, so [painting] was a side hobby. My father was an opera singer, it was his full-time job. He sang all over the world. My father was instrumental in helping me navigate, psychologically, what it means to be an artist, that struggle, how it’s OK, and how you came out on the other side. It was difficult for my father. He was married, and he had a full-time job at Avon, and a family, and a house in the suburbs [Glenview, Illinois], and children, and a wife not loving that he wanted to quit the full-time job to go be an opera singer.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

I want to say God. That’s my answer. Either that, or it’s my mother. My mom was always pushing me to be an artist, as a job. She was very supportive, and enormously encouraging. The God answer: “God” is a generic term for some sort of universal energy that flows through me, and inspires me.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

In My Head, Jil Johnson

I don’t need feedback. I know if it’s good.

Have you always had that level of confidence about your work?

Yes.

And when people come up to you and say, “You should …”, you think what?

Sometimes it’s a good idea, but otherwise I’m polite and accept they have an idea. It doesn’t happen very often. If I get a “you should,” it’s usually about doing a better job of promoting myself. It’s never about the work. It gets me every time because they’re right. I know who I am, so it’s OK. I can’t produce a lot of these things. It takes so long. I don’t think I could have a bigger business. If I had a website, I don’t think I could keep up with the work.

In some ways, exhibiting is a form of marketing. How does exhibiting your work fit into your practice?

This is my job, so if I want to sell it, I have to exhibit it somewhere. It’s very practical. The work is not for me. I never want to keep any of it. It clearly has to go out somewhere. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

You know the book The Artist’s Way? The “artist’s dates” — where you take yourself out somewhere, and walk around deliberately looking for inspiration. I haven’t done it a lot lately. I know what’s going to sell in the gallery, and I make those things. Inspiration hits. I don’t have to work that hard to come up with something new. I already have something I know will sell, and I enjoy making those things. Anymore, I just go with the flow, and don’t sweat it too much. I don’t have to work so hard, and try so hard. There are other, easier magic tricks. If want to be inspired, I can sit and do a little mediation about being open to some new inspirations, and boom: it happens.

What drives your impulse to make?

There’s a practical answer, and that’s: money. There’s an obsession: I have to do this. But then, there is something more artistic: the desire to create something really, really beautiful. That’s the artist’s answer: I’m feeling something inside, and wanting to put it out there because it’s going to be beautiful.


Jil Johnson is represented by Higher Art Gallery in Traverse City, Michigan. Directly experience Jil’s work there.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

 

 

Creativity Q+A with Katherine Corden

Traverse City painter Katherine Corden, 33, has “a short attention span when it comes to [her] painting.” Hard to believe given the extensive, practical evidence of her steady focus: on her process, her making, and the many ways she lets the world know about it. In depicting her favorite subjects — groups of people gathered, long undulating roads — her approach is to favor gesture, light, and color, then leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination.

This interview was conducted in November 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Katherine Corden


Describe the medium in which you work.

Right now I primarily work in acrylic paint on wood panels. My work occasionally will embrace mixed-media elements, so I’ll use pencil, charcoal, pastels — often on top of my acrylic paint. I frequently paint in gouache. And something I’m hoping to experiment with this year is oil painting. Always trying new things.

Why oil paint?

I have a very short attention span when it comes to my painting. I just want to continue moving onto the next phase of it — in that way, acrylic is really nice because it dries so quickly. In the way I want to embrace a looser depiction of my figures or subjects, I think oil paint has those softer edges I’m looking for. Also, oil paint colors have a more intense vibrancy to them. It’s hard to achieve that in acrylic paint. It’ll be an experiment. We’ll see.

Do you need someone to help guide you through the basics of oil painting? Or, have you had some experience with it?

I’ve had a little experience with it. One of my studio mates, Alyssa Smith, had an oil painting workshop in our studio last year that I attended. It’s nice to have friends I can [ask questions of]. The daunting thing about oil paint is it is more hazardous, and you want to make sure you’re using the right materials to minimize your toxic exposure.

Where’s your studio?

Studio view.

In downtown Traverse City [Michigan], at the Tru Fit Trouser Building. I feel so lucky to have found that space. I found it shortly after we’d moved here [from Wisconsin] in 2019. I’d been going to Vada Color to get print reproductions of my work, and VADA Color is located in the Tru Fit campus. I met Eric Gerstner, who owns and renovated the building. The old Habitat For Humanity ReStore was moving out, and he had this enormous space available. That was way too much space — I think it was about 9,000 square feet. I told [Eric] what I was looking for, and we came up with breaking up the space into a casual studio set up — our walls don’t go up to the ceiling so we can talk with each other across the wall.

In your November 14 blog post you wrote: “Like most of my paintings, the photos in this folder are from scenes found in my life (often mundane, but occasionally novel, for me at least …)” Talk about that a little bit.

Looking To Good Times, acrylic on wood panel, 36″ h x 48″ w, 2022, Katherine Corden.

I’m not unique in that I draw a lot of inspiration from my personal life. Today, we’re so lucky because we constantly have a camera with us, in our smart phone. Living in Northern Michigan, I feel lucky that we spend a lot of our time outside. What I gravitate toward, and what I’m most known for, are my beach paintings. I spend a lot of time on the beach in the summer, and feel lucky to do that. On the beach you have this perfect set-up — if you enjoy painting figures, which I do — that creates a still life for you. The sand is a neutral backdrop, you have this amazing light source with nothing obstructing it, and you get these interesting shadow shapes created on the uneven [surface of] the sand. I’m very inspired when I’m at the beach. It’s usually just people sitting on towels, or talking to each other, or shaking a towel out. I find the movement and the change in light and the patterns [cast] by everything you bring with you to the beach to be really interesting — both from a color theory standpoint because you have all these interesting colors and values going on; and from a composition standpoint because you have people sitting down and standing up, and there’s not really any other time in your day-to-day life that you’ll find that many figures [in the same place] unless you’re at life-drawing class. I used to live in Chicago, and I’d sketch people sitting on the L train; but at the beach you’re lucky that most people are in their swimsuits. You get really good light on the bare figure.

That is closer to the life-drawing context.

Yes. There’s not so many layers of clothing [at the beach]. It’s the perfect place to be looking at the figure if that’s what you’re interested in. Lately, I’m trying to explore some of those concepts of color and light; I’m taking a break from the figure. I’m looking at buildings [and other artifacts of contemporary life].

Island View Road, acrylic on wood panel, 36″ h x 48″ w, 2024, Katherine Corden

In your November 21 blog post, you featured a painting that is going to be hung at Farm Club in Traverse City. That painting is a good example of what you’re saying about reducing the elements of your painting to shape, and color.

That’s something I’m always working on. I haven’t arrived there yet by any means: I enjoy the process of painting so much that it’s hard for me to step away. What I probably need to be doing is to work on multiple pieces [simultaneously] so I can take a break, and let something breathe, then come back and reassess it.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the figures you paint is that, facially, there’s no information: no eyes, there’s a shape of a nose, of a mouth; but for all intents and purposes, the face is a blank canvas. When you remove those things, you’re asking the viewer to pay more attention to other things. Your figures’ gestures give the viewer a lot of information. In one of your paintings, Extended Family, a figure is standing, and there’s a connection between her and another figure, and that said a lot. Talk about the absence of information in the face.

I’ve talked to so many people about this because it’s a common comment people make. Everybody has a different take on it. This isn’t why I’m intentionally leaving the face out of it; but a lot of people have connected with my work because it is easier for them to imagine that they might be one of the people [in the painting]. I [also] think about how the gestures are really telling the story. When I’m just figure drawing with charcoal my favorite kind of figure drawing is gesture drawing. I love trying to quickly capture the essence of the person in the gesture. I find the looseness of

Extended Family, acrylic on wood panel, 36″ h x 48″ w, 2024, Katherine Corden

that to be a little bit mysterious. Something I’m more interested in than the anatomy is the colors I’m using. I’m trying to create more of a story with color. The intent is not to get distracted by details. Something I’m always trying to challenge myself with is: How can I achieve what I’m trying to achieve with less detail? It’s a tricky thing. I’m always trying to edit. I’ve heard this from writers before, and it sounds awful: You have to kill your babies. You have to be willing to get rid of your best line in your story, or your best mark in your painting in order to move the piece forward. Sometimes you get so hung up on a detail you thought was so brilliant, and then the rest of your painting suffers as you work around it trying to make this one detail work. If you look at my work up close, you’ll see there are a lot of layers, which I end up liking. I often will be figuring out my final composition, [then] end up painting over an entire section of work because it’s too much. It’s like taking off jewelry before you leave the house.

What makes the figure a compelling subject for you?

I’ve always been fascinated with the figure and human anatomy — perhaps this also explains the pull to my first career as a physical therapist. I really enjoy the challenge the figure offers the artist: always changing, never the same. Finally achieving a likeness of line and weight is so satisfying. I love the release of quick gesture drawing and also the meditation that comes with longer painted portraits. It is a fantastic canvas to explore color and light, two things I find endless inspiration in.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

I grew up with a mom who is an art teacher. From an early age I was exposed to art class, and art work, and we had lots of art in our home. I’m grateful I went through a public school system [in Grosse Pointe, Michigan] that had really fabulous art teachers. I graduated from high school in 2009. In 2008, when I was applying to colleges, I was fearful of applying to art school. I grew up in a community where there weren’t a lot of role models that would have shown me what a career in the arts would look like. I had my mom, who was an art teacher, telling me that it would be hard to get a job as an art teacher. Between my own fear and the adults around me, I thought I’d just continue to do art as a hobby, and study something else. I ended up going to the University of Michigan, and became a physical therapist, which I did for six years. When I graduated from physical therapy school, I started painting again. Obviously, I didn’t have a family yet, and I didn’t have to study anymore, so I had time to do what I wanted to do after I came home from work. I started sharing my paintings on social media. I made a website. It was fun, and I made some extra money. It worked out that Chicago — where I went to grad school — had a lot of art resources and programs to attend in the evenings. I met some other cool, young women who had started their own careers — it was the first time I’d met people who didn’t have traditional careers, and that really opened my eyes. I continued to work as a physical therapist, and paint in my free time, for a long time before I felt confident enough to stop my work as a therapist.

What was the light bulb that went on in your head that told you to leave physical therapy behind, and jump into this other thing?

One of the blessing of working as a physical therapist is that it’s very flexible. [Kathryn moved with her new husband, also a physical therapist, to Wisconsin and began to work part-time.] I knew we weren’t going to be living in Wisconsin forever, so I told myself I was going to take the next year to really figure out if I want to really do this art thing. Am I capable of doing this as a career and generate a living from it? I invested in teaching myself how to run a business, and that was daunting. I didn’t have any education in how to run a business. I joined some online communities that were teaching just that. It was an impactful year. We moved to Traverse City [and she worked part-time at Munson Hospital]. I covered maternity leaves, and worked [in her studio] on the weekends. We didn’t have any kids yet, and I found the [Tru Fit] studio. I was making enough money from my art; but I was fearful of letting go all the work I’d done to become a physical therapist. Having kids helped. It was clear it didn’t make sense to be doing all of these things. I slowly took less and less hours at the hospital, and painting more and more. My last day of work as a physical therapist was in 2022.

How unusual is it, amongst the people with whom you hang, that you’re not just artists but you’re also small business owners?

That’s a good question. Most of my friends understand because they followed my work, and it’s something I talk about fairly often — the business side of my work, my job. I find when I meet new people [it’s a challenge] to describe what I do. An artist friend gave me a piece of advice. When she tells people what she does, she says that she owns a small art business, and she’s the artist.

I think that’s indicative of how few people have an understanding of creative work. We all know what a dentist looks like, and how that work works. I wonder, though, if the perception of  people who do creative work is that they sit around and wait for a lightning bolt to hit, then there’s a frenzy of activity, and at the of it — wah lah! — there’s a masterpiece — when what creative people are doing is work. A job.

Tools and materials.

That was honestly one of the hard things during my transition from physical therapy, was telling people that I’m an artist. “Physical therapy” is an easy answer, and then you can move on. When you tell people you’re an artist, they go, Huh? One of the things I’ve had to practice doing is trying not to imagine what their thoughts are, that they’re thinking I’m so privileged that I can just paint all day and not have to worry about making money; but I don’t know what they’re thinking, and it’s none of my business. If they have questions, I’m always happy to answer them.  The dentist’s office is a perfect example. A dentist’s office was the first place I ever told someone I was an artist. It’s a very low-stakes place where [the hygienist or dentist] is making small talk with you, and I decided that I was just going to go ahead and see what happened. They are usually so interested in [her answer] because it’s so different from what they do.

Let’s talk about the business end of the work you do.

This book cover is from Katherine’s 2020 painting Pool Bar.

With my work, I have to think ahead an entire year. I do work with several galleries [in Northern Michigan, and Alabama]; but I have a good-sized audience and quite a few subscribers on my email list, so I’m able to represent myself. The thing I found challenging about working with galleries is that you need to have a steady supply of work, inventory. I am often able to sell pieces on my own, through my website, which is preferable because I get to keep 100 percent of the proceeds. I also have had shows at my studio in Traverse City; but most of my sales have come through my website. As my kids [ages 4 and 2] get older, and I’m able to produce a larger volume of work, I’d love to work with more galleries to extend the reach of my work, and find new audiences. The other part of my business is I license work in a couple different ways: through a couple online galleries that curate reproduction work by artists; and then, recently, I licensed my work for a book cover, which was a big dream of mine. It comes out in January.

Talk about one of the bigger projects you undertook in 2024.

The mural is at Bryant Park in Traverse City. It’s on the restroom building, a good-sized brick building [16’ x 30’], and I painted three sides of it. I was chosen through the Traverse City Arts Commission. A friend of mine sent me the application. She knew the building was on the beach, and I paint a lot of beach scenes. And, it also just happens to be two blocks from our house. The idea I pitched was I wanted to make a beach scene that appears as though you’re  looking through the building. You’d see the horizon line in the background; but the focus of the painting would be the people who frequent the beach. There are little kids playing, and bigger kids tossing their towels, adults in the background skipping stones or walking. The fun thing about a mural is that there couldn’t be a lot of details; it would be too much work at that scale. That forced me to edit. I used a limited color palette, which was a fun challenge — I was trying to re-purpose the same Sherwin Williams color as well as for someone else’s face. The colors are very much inspired by the color seen at the park.

And you’ve done how many murals on the sides of buildings?

Katherine’s mural on the Bryant Park bathhouse in Traverse City, Michigan.

That was my first and only mural.

Having it be a much larger “canvas,” but a canvas that’s three sided, how do you take what you know about painting and transpose it to the surface and that format?

A lot of my paintings on wood panel are larger. A common size is 36” x 48”. For the mural, I used a strategy I’ve used before. I created a grid [on the source sketch], and then gridded out the mural with sidewalk chalk, and then I took it square-by-square and enlarged the image.

What’s your favorite tool?

My spray bottle. I’m constantly spraying down my palette [with water]. This is one of the reason why I think I’ll like working with oil: I like a fluid consistency with the paint. I also use a palette scraper I couldn’t live without.

Do you use a sketch book?

I do use a sketch book. I haven’t been able to travel; but when I do travel I love bringing a sketch book with me. It’s a great way to do a little plein air work. I have brought my sketch book with me to the beach before; but in this phase of my life I’m at the beach with toddlers. I need to make the time to get to the beach by myself.

When you’re at the beach — or, wherever — are you more inclined to use your camera to record an idea?

Yes. I think if I was by myself I’d use a sketch book; but right now it’s so much faster for me to use my camera, and then I can put my camera away and be in the moment with my family.

How does social media fit into your practice?

Social media is a tool for marketing my work, and connecting with people who are interested in my work, connecting with other artists, connecting with businesses that might want to work with me. It’s both a networking tool, and a marketing tool. I also find myself inspired by by all the artists locally and around the world who share their work on social media. I think that social media has so many terrible things about it; but one of the nice things is if you’re looking for inspiration, you have access to people you’ve never heard of. In terms of pursuing this career, I’ve been motivated  by watching other artists flourish on social media — either because I’ve become friends with them, or they’ve been a role model; you can watch them and see how they’re doing it.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative work?

Beach portraits.

As I’ve mentioned: painting the beaches here. It informs my subject matter in a lot of ways. The community up here has been very supportive, mostly because there are so many people I’ve met who are around my age, who are doing similar work. That’s the real-life version of what I was describing on social media. There are people who I’m becoming friends with, and people who work in my studio with me who are artists, or writers, or making music. A lot of people who live up here work for themselves — there’s not a lot of industry — and that has been encouraging, that support and network of people who can help each other, answer questions, motivate each other, inspire each other. Hopefully, the area is getting recognized for that, and people are supporting the artists up here, because there’s a growing number of them.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

I don’t know if I can pinpoint a single person. Because of the expansiveness that the online community gives you, I think there have been a lot of women, who are older than me from around the country, who have done really impressive things with their career that inspire me. Sarah Madiera Day from Maine. There are a bunch of artists from South Carolina who taking their work to levels I don’t think people thought were possible. And, one of my mentors, Emily Jeffords had a big impact on me. Many of these people are moms, which has become more and more important to me. I look to other working moms to figure out how they do it. Often it feels more and more challenging to balance everything. I have a good collection of books. I love looking at the work of Fairfield Porter, Matisse, Richard Dibenkorn. I just got a book by Josef Albers. He’s been inspiring me to focus more on color, and see where that takes me.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Because my mom is an art teacher, I always feel good asking her questions. She gives me honest feedback, and it feels like a very safe space because she’s my mom. My good friend Brianne Farley has a studio in the [Tru Fit Trouser] building, and we’ve been working next to each other since 2020. She has given me good feedback. Our work is very different. I’m a large-scale painter and she’s a children’s book illustrator, but she did go to grad school in art. I have a group of three girlfriends who are artists, living in different states, and we meet on Zoom about once a month. We critique each other’s work, and talk about what we’re struggling with — any business or art thing we’re going through. We have a text thread, and that’s very valuable.

Sisterhood is very powerful in your practice. You have a whole range of female people who are friends and mentors, and they all feed into your practice in one way or another. Is that intentional?

The Fika paintings.

I don’t think it’s intentional; but one of the big, big blessings of my life is I’ve always found really good girlfriends; from a young age, I’ve had really good girlfriends. I think I’m just naturally trained to seek their help when I need it. That also has been a theme in my work in the past, too. A couple years ago I did a collection where I asked a bunch of my friends here to meet up at Farm Club. I took photos of them having drinks together, sitting and talking to each other. I used those photos as reference photos for paintings. The collection was titled Fika, which is a Scandinavian term for enjoying a drink or treat with someone without distraction. You’re fully present, enjoying that time together. We were trying to tell a story of female friendship, and being present, and the importance of that.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

I just went to a talk last week with Kate Korrock, and we talked a lot about this at the discussion [November 13 Caffeinated Conversations program sponsored by the Northwest Michigan Arts and Culture Network]. One of my takeaways is there are so many purposes art can have, and to limit art to having one purpose would be such a disservice to the practice and expression of it all. There’s a place for having art that makes people uncomfortable, and questioning their beliefs, wanting to explore new topics. I think art has a powerful way of helping people escape, or feel grounded, or calm. In general, [at the November 13 program] we talked a lot about how art helps us make sense of the world around us, that it’s a reflection of the world through that artist’s lens. But then the viewer is interpreting the art through their own life experience.

Is the maker’s role in the world to be a provocateur, or a storyteller, or a bringer of beauty?

Through Lines, acrylic on wood panel, 36 h x 48″ w, 2023, Katherine Corden. 

One of the nice things about living in the time we do, all of the above is needed. I think it’s important for museums and larger communities or cities or people who are going to be investors in the arts to sponsor or encourage more provocative art. In terms of having an artist producing purely provocative art would require that the artist be privileged. You’re running a small business, so you constantly trying to balance your perspective with: How am I going to make a living from this work? How am I going to make artwork that I enjoy, and I think other people will put in their homes? As [one’s] career grows, and [one has] more security and feel more loyalty from a wider base of collector, then [the artist] has more privileges and freedom to explore more provocative work. It’s important to have beautiful work that people can escape into; but people need all different types of art.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

Something I’ve found really important is exercising, and getting outside to exercise. That helps everything in my life, and it definitely helps my creativity. My preferred form of exercise is probably going on a run, which I’m not always able to do. When I’m running or on a walk outside is when I’ll get ideas, and have more energy to execute said ideas.


Read more about Katherine Corden here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

 

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